Senator Raffy Tulfo on Tuesday denounced Kuwait’s crackdown on Filipino workers which has led to their expulsion from the oil-rich country.
Tulfo, who is the chair of the Senate Committee on Migrant Workers, expressed regret that some 350 Filipinos were recently deported while talks were still ongoing between Kuwait and the Philippines to resolve the temporary deployment ban imposed on first-time household workers.
“We cannot approach the bargaining table with our arms folded and our knees bowed. They are using these things against us rather than accepting our suggested terms and conditions, which include apologies from the Kuwaiti government,” Tulfo told Senate reporters.
Despite the ongoing talks on Filipinos exposed to human trafficking and abusive employers, Tulfo pressed the Kuwaiti government to reconsider its decision to deport unauthorized OFWs.
He underlined the necessity for shelters for abused OFWs because many of them were forced to sleep on the streets while the embassy’s shelters were full and while they were completing paperwork for their repatriation or gathering evidence for their cases.
“We cannot expect them to stay in the home of the person who victimized them or to turn to a forum that is known to be biased in the abusers’ favor,” Tulfo said.
In response to the death in January 2023 of OFW Jullebee Ranara, whose body was discovered charred in the middle of a desert after she was allegedly raped and impregnated by the 17-year-old son of her employer, the congressman called for a total deployment ban to Kuwait.
Meanwhile, the repatriation of more than 600 OFWs from Kuwait was seen as a positive development by an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Eduardo de Vega pointed out that the repatriated Filipinos had been longing to be sent home for months.
“It is a positive development because those 600 or so, including 353 who flew in just this weekend, had been waiting for months and months and that was an issue between the Philippines and Kuwait,” De Vega said in a TV interview.